What did the students say? An analysis of student feedback in a large introductory software engineering course (extended abstract)

Abstract

The contents of this paper falls into four parts (1) a course description, (2) a discussion of statistical problems – e.g., sample size, (3) challenges related to data analyses, mostly based on bar charts and (4) analyses of the survey data and (5) conclusion on how to improve the course. The survey showed that the three best course components where retrospectives, individual reflections and group reflections – all helping the students to reflect on their own work and how they interacted with the rest of the group. The most surprising result is that while the majority of the stu- dents gave a satisfaction with own work score of 5 (at the top) or 4 (almost at the top), they still indicating several course components that needed to be improved. The gen- eral attitude seems to be that while they felt the course to be good, they still saw some course components that could be improved. Those that scored the course as 3 or lower had few improvement suggestions.